The loss was marked at the city's annual Satchmo Summerfest, a festival honoring the memory of another New Orleans jazz icon, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong.

Video of Fountain performing with the famous singer and cornet player, who died in 1971, was featured at a Saturday symposium on Armstrong's work.

Fountain was a New Orleans native and performer who also spent time on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He gained national fame on the old Lawrence Welk show in the late 1950s and, later, on more than 50 television appearances with Johnny Carson.

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Clarinetist Pete Fountain, whose recording of "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" became the unofficial anthem for traditional New Orleans jazz, has died. He was 86.

Fountain's son-in-law and manager Benny Harrell said Fountain died Saturday morning of heart failure. He had been in hospice care in New Orleans.

Fountain was well known to television fans through his appearances on the Lawrence Welk and Johnny Carson shows. He traced his musical style to Benny Goodman and Irving Fazola.

Fountain grew up listening to Goodman's records, but Fazola was playing in the French Quarter where Fountain could listen firsthand. The result was Fountain's distinctive combination of swing and Dixieland.